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Now,
I got in my hands two recordings by Seattle’s Midday
Veil, a psychedelic quartet that for a change, truly
seems to experiment instead of simply playing ordinary
rock, abusing wah wah effects, lamely strumming a sitar
and forcefully including keyboards and that, imagine, has
a lame vocalist on the front. Yeah, if you are going to
go psychedelic and trust me, are going to be
categorized as experimental, then you might as well just
go all the way. Really, think outside the box. Venture
outside your comfort zone and stop thinking about rock
music altogether.
In
Subterranean Ritual, Midday Veil get it right. Sure thing, there
isn’t much in the way of structure and some may say there aren’t
even songs in it, but as a fan of the Ya Ho Wa 13, it left me
satisfied and quite frankly, left me jonesing for those days of
yore when I was allowed to stare into space for days on end.
There weren’t rules back then and there aren’t any rules in
Subterranean Ritual. This is a 2009 improvised recording that
is divided into seven cuts. The naturality of the process is
obvious. Anyone into music can listen to this and understand
that the music within is the product of the moment, a happy
accident born of cause and response.
The flow is clear and the vibes are weird and good. As a result,
there is a quiet laid back sense over the whole thing. I mean,
“Whatever It Is, It Was” actually had me thinking of water
flowing downstream. So if nature could play instruments, the
music produced would sound something like this. There are no vocals and
the tracks flow into each other. The drums aren’t banged per se,
they are more like strummed and caressed, with a pressing
presence of cymbals lightening up the sounds. The guitars
sparkle and timidly sprinkle the soft movements of the music
instead of leading the songs and cluttering the space in typical
psychedelic fashion. Midday Veil actually achieve a beat in
“Choreia”, where traces of krautrock haunt the music and the
ghostly vocals of Emily Pothast give the cadence an ethereal and
ghostly feel.
Queen of the
Void was recorded in May of 2009 and is divided into two long
songs. The whole thing falls a few minutes short of the half
hour mark. This time around the songwriting is evident. Still,
the music of Midday Veil retains the naturalistic vibes. The
first songs slowly evolve with Emily’s voice romancing the
listener while a slow groove takes shape. The first track is
divided in two parts; “Remember Child/Matlacueitl” and you will
recognize the second part by its dream-like qualities; a mixture
of drone and new age gives this second half a different
character to the band. The song that gives this recording its
name starts off like an Earth track. Vibrato here and Western
soundtrack influence takes an odd turn with the angelic tone of
Pothast. The drama is welcomed with those astral guitars. We
are only halfway through this trip. At this point there are
still about eight minutes to go. That’s way more than enough for
Midday Veil to experiment more than any psychedelic band do in a
lifetime.
Both
recordings are limited to 300 copies.
Official Site
MySpace |
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